News Analysis

Blow to Bush: An Ally in Spain Is Rejected by Antiwar Voters

By DAVID E. SANGER

Published: March 15, 2004

WASHINGTON, March 14 — The ouster of the center-right party in Spain, only days after a terrorist bombing that may be linked to Al Qaeda, is the first electoral rebuke of one of President Bush's most steadfast allies in the Iraq war.

When France and Germany balked at supporting the war on Iraq, the Spanish prime minister, José María Aznar, stood publicly by Mr. Bush at a summit meeting in the Azores a year ago this week, and just days before the war began. Now voters have elected the opposition Socialists, although the center right was leading in the polls until the terrorist attack.

The Bush administration must now fight the perception, accurate or not, that acts of terror against America's allies can sway nations into rethinking the wisdom of standing too closely with Mr. Bush.

Time after time, President Bush has responded to critics who say he has alienated America's closest allies by pointing to Mr. Aznar as a courageous example of a leader who ignored poll numbers — upward of 90 percent of Spaniards opposed the war — and who acted in Spain's best interests.

Only last week several senior members of the administration said they fully expected that his conservatives would emerge victorious. In fact, months ago a senior adviser to Mr. Bush predicted that should a terrorist attack occur in Europe, it would probably drive the Europeans closer to the United States and its approach to the campaign against terror, not away from it.

So on Sunday evening administration officials scrambled to hide their disappointment. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, leaving for India, declined to respond publicly to the Socialists' victory, and the White House drafted a positive-sounding statement saying President Bush looked forward to working with José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Socialist leader who will now become prime minister.

But it was lost on no one in Mr. Bush's inner circle that Mr. Zapatero rode to victory by denouncing Mr. Bush's approach to the world, and that he pledged to bring home Spain's 1,300 troops in Iraq in July. "We don't know how big a factor the Madrid bombing was in the outcome," one senior American official said. "We don't know that what happened in Spain marks a broader trend. But I wouldn't be telling the truth if I said this is the kind of outcome we might have wished for."

Administration officials said this weekend that they were offering Spain all the help they could to determine who was behind the bombings, and whether Al Qaeda's claim of responsibility was credible. But now, Mr. Bush faces the task of persuading a new Spanish leadership — the same politicians who argued that Mr. Aznar was far too close to Mr. Bush and his policy of pre-emption — that the only way to confront terrorism is to strike back.

Senior American diplomats were quick to note that even the Socialists had pledged to take part in peacekeeping in Iraq if the United Nations passed a resolution embracing the Iraqi transitional government, which is scheduled to take over from the Coalition Provisional Authority on June 30. Such a resolution seems highly likely.

In any case, Spain's contribution in Iraq is symbolic, less than 1 percent of the forces on the ground.

Before the election results were in, Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, said on the NBC News program "Meet the Press," "I believe that the Spanish people understand that they've had strong and good leadership in President José María Aznar and his government, that fighting terrorism cannot allow one to be intimidated." She was referring to the prime minister.

A few moments later, after saying it was unclear whether the Spanish attacks were carried out by the domestic terror group ETA, by Al Qaeda, or by some combination, she said: "They will not win, and we will not falter. The idea that somehow someone stirring up a beehive of terrorists, creating terrorists where they all were not, simply ignores the history that goes back into the early '80s where a progression of terrorist incidents, terrorist activities, have gotten stronger."

It is too early to assess the full impact of the bombings on politics in Spain or the rest of Europe. At home, Mr. Bush's associates, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, are already using the Madrid bombings to reinforce their case that the world remains a very dangerous place, and that it would be enormously risky to depart from Mr. Bush's strategy.

On Sunday, Mr. Cheney cited the railway bombings in Madrid to attack the strategy of the presumptive Democratic nominee, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts.

"Senator Kerry has said that we should treat attacks on our nation primarily as matters of law enforcement and intelligence," Mr. Cheney told an audience in Florence, Ky. "He's embraced the strategy of the 1990's, which holds that when we are attacked, we ought to round up those directly responsible, put them on trial, and then call it a day."

But such a strategy, he said, is insufficient because "it leaves the network behind the attacks virtually untouched." He concluded by noting that the attack in Spain "is a reminder that there are evil people in the world, capable of any atrocity, and determined to take innocent life."

Mr. Kerry is arguing that the administration is wildly oversimplifying his position, and he, too, would take the war to the terrorists. But he argues that he would do it in a way that preserves alliances and avoids the kind of reaction that Spanish voters expressed Sunday. "We can only fight terror with the help of our allies," he said in a recent interview and that means devising a strategy that keeps not only leaders like Mr. Aznar on Washington's side, but their constituencies as well.